Single-Minded: Plowing Through the Oprah Bio

As it stands, "internationally acclaimed investigative biographer" Kitty Kelley's latest offering, Oprah: A Biography, reads more like a middle-school book report than a well-researched, heavily reported, and revelation-laden expose. Footnotes would have been greatly appreciated.

It reminded me of one I wrote in seventh grade on France. I waited until the 11th hour and, instead of going to the library to do work, I talked to boys and simply penciled in all the things I could remember about the French (They speak French!) on college-ruled paper.

My mother was aghast when I brought home a C because I deserved an F. "Oh, Lena, Mrs. ____ only gave you this grade because she likes you. Do it over." So I was forced back to the drawing board and an ancient typewriter.

Unfortunately, Kelley didn't get that same memo. So instead of giving a legion of Oprahphiles what they missed out in 1994 when the talk-show doyenne decided to cancel the publication of an autobiography she'd written for Knopf, Oprah is a he-said-she-said, best-of-past-quotes compilation. According to Oprah, Winfrey put the kibosh on her own book because she'd revealed too much of herself in it--namely a brief stint as a teenage prostitute. The irony here is that Kelley's Oprah reveals nothing a good Google search wouldn't.

The 423-page tome does little but regurgitate old rumors and tired blind items about a woman who's understandably become more legend than laid-back. Reading the repeated mentions of Oprah's insistence on confidentiality agreements, her embellishments on the truth, and her extreme poise as a teenager, I couldn't help but think, "Umm, duh!" If you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, then it goes without saying that you can't create an empire without pissing off a bunch of people.

"Whether her pregnancy was the result of sexual molestation or promiscuity," writes Kelley of Oprah, who became pregnant at 14 possibly at the hands of her father's brother, "it was something she felt she needed to hide." Thanks for that. In the next paragraph, Kelley "reveals" that during a 1994 high school reunion show, Oprah said, "I did not have any embarrassing moments in high school." This is supposedly proof of what one of Oprah's aunts calls "Oprah's lies." Or perhaps just a regular woman struggling with a painful past?

Also, the writing is pretty bad. Case in point: "During his 1993 interview [with Oprah], Michael Jackson looked ‘Off The Wall,' Oprah wasn't ‘Bad,' and it never got ‘Dangerous'..." Even Es for effort have to be earned.

Pulling in only $188 dollars a week sucks. I survived off the kindness of strangers, Ramen noodles and free food in the break room. I could barely afford my $550 share of the rent, much less afford to fly back home to California for Christmas. One week before the holidays, Gayle King, wearing a Santa hat and a smile, walked into the conference room to announce that everyone (interns, included) was getting a week's pay as a bonus, funded personally by Oprah. I have never needed $188 dollars more in my entire life and because of that: "Don't nobody better say nothing bad about Miss Winfrey!"

But truth be told, it isn't beyond the scope of even the hardest Opraholic to believe that the media meteor is fallible. Millions of minds out there in TV land won't explode upon learning that Winfrey may have a Pluto-sized ego, may have done drugs in the ‘70s, may have struggled with her younger brother's sexuality, had a son at 14, a family that asks for more handouts than hugs, and rules her billion-dollar kingdom with a titanium fist. If it's lonely at the top, then one can probably lose oneself in the stratosphere.

When I got tired of constantly double-checking Oprah's "own words" (thousands of separate files Kelley amassed over two decades of interviews) with the 44 pages of end notes at the back of the book, I started entertaining myself with Oprah's take on relationships, which, with 2010 inflation, would probably land her on Nightline.

In 1981 (when I was a 1-year-old), Oprah told the women of Goucher College in a commencement speech "unlike our mothers, we know that by the time we are middle-aged we have more than a 50-percent chance of never being married ... So there's no denying the obvious. We have to take care of ourselves." In a 1993 interview she said, "I dislike this notion of a desperate woman who wants to get married." Winfrey also said that she cared whether or not a potential match was a "ditch digger." "I know that sounds elitist. But I have such great expectations for myself in life ... that I just don't understand people who don't aspire to do or be anything."